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As they walked into the apartment, Eda looked up from her preparations in the kitchen and smiled. “Welcome!” she shouted over the music. “You must be Augusta Carter.” Drying her hands on a dish towel, she walked around the small dining table and gave Augusta a warm hug. “It’s so nice to meet you! Erol told me all about you. You’re much younger than I imagined!”
Augusta laughed at her forthrightness. She immediately liked the friendly, energetic young woman whose home she had just entered. Tall and thin like Erol, Eda’s dark eyebrows seemed permanently raised in an expression of good humor and cheerfulness. A vibrant energy radiated from her thin frame, making the likeness to her brother even more striking. Unlike Erol’s chocolatey brown eyes, however, Eda’s eyes were a bright green. They sparkled as she turned down the loud music and gestured for Augusta to be seated at the small table in the center of the apartment.
“I hope you like Turkish food! I’ve been cooking all day.”
The table was completely covered with dishes of all sizes, most of which Augusta had never seen before. She recognized the stuffed grape leaves arrayed in one of the dishes. There seemed to be all kinds of salads filled with all kinds of things. Carrots? Cucumbers? Beef pot roast? In one dish puff pastries sat stacked on top of each other, and in another mounds of rice luxuriated in a creamy, golden sauce. Eda was bringing over bowls of soup from her kitchen, setting them down on the few uncovered inches that remained of the table.
Erol gave his sister a big hug, said a few words in Turkish, and then pulled out a chair and seated himself. He scooped out a big spoonful of the nearest dish and gestured for Augusta to do the same. “Please, eat! It’s all delicious. Eda is the best cook in Istanbul.”
“Thank you, Eda!” Augusta gave her hostess an appreciative look and sat down, wondering where she should start. Her stomach rumbled as she surveyed the miniature banquet. “This looks wonderful. But I’ve actually never had Turkish food before. What should I try first?”
Eda and Erol both immediately gave her contradictory advice, talking over each other and pointing across the table at different foods. Augusta nodded politely and, in order to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings, decided to have some of everything. She tried several dishes, starting with the carrot salad and rice pilaf, then moving on to the stuffed grape leaves, spinach pastries, and stewed beef. As promised, it was all incredibly delicious. She was glad she had come hungry.
As the piles of food in front of them slowly disappeared, Augusta listened to the friendly banter between brother and sister. Both of them were cheerful and talkative, and she wasn’t required to say much, other than the occasional “I see” or “Interesting.” This enabled her to refill her plate a few times while laughing along with their exuberant discussion—though she still couldn’t keep up with Erol, who managed to eat several platefuls while holding up his end of the conversation.
Augusta soon learned that Eda was the older sibling by two years, and she had first come to Istanbul to study civil engineering. Erol later followed her from their hometown a few hours away, but his passion was history. Now they both had good jobs doing work they enjoyed. While Erol rented a tiny room near the museum—much too small to host company—his sister shared this spacious flat with a roommate. “It’s too bad Nur is visiting her parents right now,” Eda said with an apologetic glance at Augusta. “You would love her. She’s studied in America. The two of you would have so much to talk about.”
“Yes, that’s too bad.” Augusta tried to look disappointed, but she was thankful to be spared another chatty host plying her with food and conversation. Eda and Erol were charming, but now that her stomach was full and she was safely settled in the apartment, she was starting to feel extremely tired. The plane ride had been bumpy and she hadn’t slept well the night before. She wondered when it would be polite to excuse herself and go to bed.
Sleeping, however, was not on her hosts’ minds. After dinner, as Eda brought out a beautiful teapot and began pouring tea into tiny finger-glasses, she smiled at Augusta and said, “So where are these famous lost discourses I’ve heard so much about? Maybe Erol has already seen them, but I haven’t. I’d like to have a look.”
“Sure.” Augusta brought her duffel bag over to the cleared-away table and carefully pulled out the old leather-bound volume. “Erol hasn’t seen it yet either.”
“Wow, Erol,” Eda teased. “Maybe you’re growing up. I thought for sure you would have cornered her already for a look at your beloved book.” She elbowed him in the ribs as Augusta opened the book delicately to the first page and set it in the center of the table. The beautiful script stared up at them from crinkled, yellowed pages. Eda and Erol, standing on either side of the small dining table, cast shifting shadows as they jostled and craned their necks over the book.
“This is it!” Erol announced with joy. “It’s the lost discourses. I’m 99% sure. You see this symbol?” He pointed to a small seal at the bottom of the title page. “This is the mark of Müteferrika.” He turned the page gently, reverently, and his eyes quickly scanned down the next page. “Yes, it says Diatribes of Epictetus. We’ve found it!”
Erol was beside himself with happiness. He stood up and began striding back and forth across the room. If energetic was his normal condition, he had now reached its ultra-concentrated state—he appeared unable to stop moving. “I can’t believe it,” he was muttering, to no one in particular. “It’s true. I can’t believe it. We’ve found the lost discourses!” He paced back and forth, then returned to the table for another look at the fabled book.
Augusta watched in amusement, trying not to think about how much money she might get for this unusual item, whose existence she hadn’t even known about a few days earlier. The gallery she had long dreamed of opening seemed suddenly within reach. She could do a lot with that money. This book was her ticket to the future she had always dreamed of. A small, quiet voice in the back of her mind asked if it was really the right thing to sell a treasured family heirloom, but she promptly pushed it away, replacing the momentary doubt with visions of her spacious gallery.
Eda, too, was laughing at her brother’s manic elation, but Augusta could tell she shared his excitement. She had doubtless listened over the years to his dreams, his yearning to find this musty old manuscript. Augusta realized, with mixed emotions, that while the discourses were the springboard for her own dreams, they were the culmination of Erol’s.
“Okay, but there’s something you haven’t considered yet.” Augusta decided to bring Erol back to earth before his feet actually floated off the ground. “What about the guys trying to steal the book? What are you going to do if they manage to lift it out of the museum?”
Still pacing, Erol held up his arms in protest and scoffed. “No way, they can’t do that. It will be safe once it’s in the museum. Our most important pieces are protected by infrared laser locks. Not exactly Mona Lisa-level security, but good enough. They can’t get to it there.”
Eda, who had now seated herself in a comfortable armchair in the living room, was sipping her tea from one of the tiny glasses. “Unless it’s the Rumelov group.” She put down her cup and stared meaningfully at her brother. “They could steal it.”
This stopped Erol in his tracks. The color left his cheeks and, for the first time all evening, he was silent.
“What’s the Rumelov group?” Augusta could tell they were bad, whoever they were.
“Occultists with a criminal past.” Eda sipped her tea, twisting the small glass absent-mindedly in her fingers. “They’re obsessed with divination and fortune-telling. They’ve been known to target antique books, art, and other items that relate to divination. The museum has had trouble with them before.”
“Occultists? What would they want with the lost discourses?” Of all the strange things Augusta had heard today, this might be the strangest. “I thought it was just ancient philosophy. Surely there isn’t any fortune-telling in that.”
“There isn’t,” Erol said firmly. “But they think there is. The ancient Stoics wrote treatises on divination, which means reading signs to tell the will of the gods. No one knows for sure what they said because most of their writings were lost over time. But some people think the discourses”—he stopped and put his hand out over the old book— “could reveal their ancient secrets. The Rumelov group might be crazy enough to believe it.”
More secrets, thought Augusta, as she mentally processed this latest revelation. But this one sounded pretty far-fetched. Somehow it didn’t square with everything else she had learned about the discourses. And it didn’t square with what she knew about her grandfather. Or Elizabeth Carter.
“Can’t you read the book now and find out?” Augusta asked Erol.
“It will take a while for me to translate the whole thing. Many weeks, or even months, to do it properly. We’ll know for sure soon. But I’ll bet you there’s nothing on divination. That wasn’t Epictetus’s style.”
“But the Rumelovs might not agree with you,” interjected Eda.
Erol waved his hand in front of him, as if swatting away the whole group in one fell swoop. “But it might not be the Rumelovs. What about Father Ephraim? He’s not happy about the Ottoman History Museum potentially owning the discourses. Remember when the museum acquired that chalice? He believes everything of Greek provenance belongs to the Greeks here.”
At this Eda nodded thoughtfully, while Augusta wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Okay, who’s Father Ephraim?”
“Abbot of Aya Yorgi, the Monastery of St. George. It’s an old Greek monastic community on Büyükada, an island off the coast of Istanbul. There’s always been a Greek community there. You can still see plenty of Orthodox churches around the city, especially out on the islands. Maybe we’ll go see them tomorrow.”
“Yes, wonderful idea!” Eda stood up, yawning and looking at her watch. “That reminds me, it’s getting late. We should probably let our guest get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow is a big day.”
“Right.” Erol stood up from the chair he had occupied for all of three minutes. “Thanks for the dinner, abla. And thanks for putting Augusta up tonight. I’m sure the two of you will have fun together. I’ll see you in the morning.” He headed toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Eda put her hand on her hip, giving Erol a stern look. “You don’t think you can come here, eat, and leave without doing any work.” It wasn’t a question. She handed him the teapot and indicated the kitchen. “You’re washing up while I show Augusta her room.”
He didn’t argue. As Augusta carefully tucked the old book under her arm, grabbed her old duffel bag, and followed Eda down the hallway, the last thing she saw was Erol Yilmaz retreating to the kitchen, teacups and saucers rattling in his overzealous hands.
Lovely. Enjoyed the touches of humor. The food made me hungry....Delicious. Every single dish.